Our new Archbishop(880) died yesterday; but the church loses its head with as little noise as a question is now carried or lost in Parliament.

Poor Sir Charles Williams is returned from Russia, having lost his Senses upon the road.  This is imputed to a lady at Hamburgh, who gave him, or for whom he took some assistance to his passion; but we hope he will soon recover.

The most particular thing I know is what happened the other day:  a frantic Earl of Ferrars(881) has for this twelvemonth supplied conversation by attempting to murder his wife, a pretty, harmless young woman, and every body that took her part. having broken the peace, to which the House of Lords tied him last year, the cause was trying again there on Friday last.  Instead of attending it, he went to the assizes at Hertford to appear against a highwayman, one Page, of extraordinary parts and escapes.  The Earl had pulled out a pistol, but trembled so that the robber turned, took it out of his hand quietly, and said, “My lord, I know you always carry more pistols about you; give me the rest.”  At the trial, Page pleaded that my lord was excommunicated, consequently could not give evidence, and got acquitted.(882)

There is just published Swift’s History of the Four last Years of Queen Anne:  Pope and Lord Bolingbroke always told him it would disgrace him, and persuaded him to burn it.  Disgrace him indeed it does, being a weak libel, ill-written for style, uninformed, and adopting the most errant mob-stories.(883) He makes the Duke of Marlborough a coward, Prince Eugene an assassin, my father remarkable for nothing but impudence, and would make my Lord Somers any thing but the most amiable character in the world, if unfortunately he did not praise him while he tries to abuse.

Trevor(884) of Durham is likely to go to Canterbury.  Adieu!

(880) Archbishop Hutton.  He was succeeded by Secker.

(881) Laurence Shirley, fourth Earl of Ferrars, who, in January 1760, shot his land-steward, for which he was tried in Westminster-hall, by his peers, in the following April, and executed at Tyburn.-E.

(882) At the ensuing Rochester assizes he was tried for robbing a Mr. Farrington, and executed.-E.

(883) Swift himself, in his Journal to Stella, calls it “his grand business,” and pronounced it “the best work he had ever written."-E.

(884) Dr. Richard Trevor.  This did not happen.

418 Letter 258
To Sir Horace Mann. 
Arlington Street, April 14, 1758.

As you was disappointed of any intelligence that might be in it (I don’t know what was), I am sorry my letter of December 14th miscarried; but with regard to my commissions in Stosch’s collection, it did not signify, since they propose to sell it in such great morsels.  If they are forced to relent, and separate it, what I wish to have, and had mentioned to you, were, “his sculptured gems that have vases on them, of which he had a large ring box:”